Oracle is moving to raise up to $50 billion this year to expand its cloud computing business.

The Information reported on Sunday that Oracle will raise funds through bond and stock issuance and invest them in building data centres for large customers. Oracle said it will meet large-scale demand, citing contracts with OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, TikTok, xAI and AMD.

The fundraising plan is part of efforts to flesh out a roadmap Oracle presented last year to increase cloud investment. In particular, a contract with OpenAI is known to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and Oracle is accelerating development of its own data centres for it.

Market concerns are also growing because the investment is so large and the payback period is uncertain.

Oracle's shares have fallen about 50 percent from a peak a year ago, wiping out nearly $450 billion in market capitalisation. The Information reported that the industry views investor anxiety as being fuelled by uncertainty over OpenAI's ability to pay or when facilities will be completed, as Oracle moves into what it sees as excessive front-loaded investment.

Developers responsible for building OpenAI data centres have already borrowed more than $65 billion in construction funding.

Oracle also issued $18 billion in bonds in September last year, and its cash holdings stood at about $20 billion as of late November. But The Information reported that Oracle burned $10 billion in the fiscal second quarter ended in November, pushing free cash flow into negative territory and increasing the need for additional fundraising.